


Under the Eyes of an Unforgiving God

by DaniStormborn



Category: The Handmaid's Tale (TV), The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-06-14 10:01:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15386343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaniStormborn/pseuds/DaniStormborn
Summary: If I close my eyes and concentrate hard enough, I can almost forget him. I can almost forget everything.I can almost forget his face, his name . . . the way his muscles moved beneath the skin, stretched taut like an animal hide stretched over a drum.Oh, dear God . . .Please don’t let me forget him.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short little fic portrayed in vignettes of my original female and male characters trapped in the unforgiving, shocking world of "The Handmaid's Tale". Rated "Mature" for insinuated scenes of a sexual nature.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> \- DaniStormborn

Part I

I

If I close my eyes and concentrate hard enough, I can almost forget him. I can almost forget everything.

 

I can almost forget the feel of him. The smell of his skin and the taste of him. I can almost forget his laugh, his grin, the color of his eyes. If I just . . . _close_ my eyes and concentrate . . . I can almost forget that I used to love him so much it hurt. And that hurt was like a splinter of glass that had somehow wormed it’s way into my heart. That every time I thought about him sometimes, I could barely breathe, it hurt so much.

 

I can almost forget his face, his name . . . the way his muscles moved beneath the skin, stretched taut like an animal hide stretched over a drum.

 

Oh, dear God . . .

 

 _Please_ don’t let me forget him.

 

II

Zipporah wasn’t like the other Wives. I think she pitied us more than she pitied herself.

 

I often sat with her in her sitting room while she sewed, thick, scratchy wool looped and looped around my hands. She smelled of lemon verbena, and hummed while she sewed. Her hair was a thick copper, positively beautiful when it shone in the sun. Her eyes were gray – the color of impending storm clouds.

 

She pitied me. Just like I pitied her.

 

“You had a son, did you not?”

 

I nodded at her murmured question, keeping my eyes averted to the thick navy-blue carpet beneath us. There were rumors of an Eye in our household. With such knowledge came caution, especially between the two of us. It was not common for Wives and their Handmaidens to be friendly. Not unheard of, but nevertheless uncommon.

 

Suspicious

 

"Yes, Mother. Charlie.”

 

I could hear her nod in her next words. “Once, I did too. Julian.”

 

“What happened to him?”

 

“He died. Three days after birth.”

 

An all too common occurrence.

 

“You?”

 

I felt my heart constrict painfully in my chest, and fought the urge to cry. To burst out into tears that would threaten to drown us all. I felt a flood of sensation threaten to overpower me. The memory of how he felt and tasted washed over me in a tidal wave. The feel of my son’s ebony curls against my skin, threatened to scald me like boiling water. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry, and sob, and beg.

 

I wanted _them_.

 

I wanted _him_.

 

I barely managed to swallow the lump that had been forming in my throat. “He . . . he is with his father.”

 

The words came out in a whisper barely audible, but nevertheless, I felt Zipporah’s movements slow. I could picture her slow nod. Her look of pity. I could practically feel her urge to brush her hand across the back of my head in what would hopefully be taken as a comforting gesture. She did not. I silently thanked her.

 

“Dead?”

 

The words caught in my throat before bursting forth with one last gasping effort:

 

“I don’t know.”

 

III

The Commander was twice the age of Zipporah. She was not much older than me, but the Commander was in his early sixties. Tall, broad, and built like a mountain, he ruled the home like a castle, and he, the King. If he held any love for Zipporah, he made no effort – or intention – of showing it.

 

It was me he was infatuated with.

 

Such a thing was dangerous, he knew that, but didn’t care. He wouldn’t get the punishment if it got out that the Commander loved his wife’s Handmaiden. He wouldn’t get the ridicule, the scorn. If anything, behind closed doors, he would have been clapped on the back and congratulated. It wasn’t every day that a Commander had a beautiful wife _and_ Handmaiden.

 

The fear of him – of what he could _do –_ was what kept our tongues in check.

 

IV

He’s never been on the wall.

 

I check every day.

 

My partner, Ofmichael, knows there is someone I look for, since I insist on going past the wall every day. She must know. After all, doesn’t everyone have someone they look for on the wall with bated breath, eyes full of tears for that faithful day when they finally do show up?

 

He never has, though.

 

I am not stupid. I know there are a thousand other ways he could die that would _not_ earn him a spot on the wall, but still . . . not seeing him gives me hope. Of what, I’m not sure. That there’s a chance, however slim, that he’s still alive out there . . . somewhere? That somewhere, Charlie is too? That maybe he got out . . . that the both of them got out.

 

I cry in joy every night in bed when I see he’s not on that wall. I cry, not willing to come to terms with the fact that he is most probably dead. He was never one for blindly following rules – of not protecting me. He would have done something – tried to get to me, fighting back when he should have been submissive. Being submissive was something that he would have rather died than do. I don’t even think he knew how to be anything other than strong and dominant.

 

But I can’t live in a world where there is not even the _possibility_ he is not alive.

 

V

Sometimes, when we pass through the checkpoints, I look at the soldiers and wonder if my son is one of them.

 

The pimply ones. The tall, gangly ones. The ones who look uncertain of their place there – of the guns they hold. The ones with the green eyes. The ones with the curly ebony hair.

 

The ones who have dimples when they smile.

 

I realize that my son is still too young to be a soldier. But that one day he might. That one day, he might be awarded a Martha of his own. That one day he might run a household in this still quite strange, oppressive regime. That one day he might rise high enough in the ranks to become an Eye. Or to be placed in the home of someone wealthy and influential – someone with a Handmaiden of his own. Like his mother.

 

It drives another nail through my heart.

 

VI

The Nights are the worst.

 

Zipporah and I both dread them. The two of us waiting for him in the living room – her domain – with our Martha, Ruby, and the Commander’s driver, Trevor, standing behind me as I kneel there on the plush, flawless blue carpeting. Zipporah sits in her chair, back straight, poised, face expressionless. Her thick copper hair, fiery in the lamplight, pinned behind her head. Her basket of wool sits beside her feet, but she does not knit. Neither of us can do much of anything on those Nights. Both of us are desperately trying to keep our dinners in our stomachs.

 

We are like two calves being led to the slaughter. We cling to each other these nights . . . as two women forced to put through a heinous ritual.

 

I do remember this. Or whatever this is a pale facsimile of. Foreplay, was it?

 

I remember candlelight and romantic bubble baths. I remember Marvin Gaye, Lionel Ritchie, Kenny G. I remember rose petals on the bed and silky, sensual lingerie.

 

I can close my eyes and the memories come back to me as if they had occurred just hours ago. The feel of his lips on mine, his tongue in my mouth. The feel of his hands running down my body, squeezing and prodding and rubbing. The rasp of his beard on the soft, sensitive inner flesh of my thighs. The blaze of his green eyes as they held mine from over the flat plain of my stomach and the ample hills of my breasts.

 

The ominous “thud” of the Commander’s cane on the hardwood of the hallway outside the room, is what brings me out of my memories. And back into the hellscape of which I live.

 

No.

 

This is not foreplay. Not how I remember it, anyway.


	2. Chapter Two

Part Two

I

I hated taking my clothes off. To bathe was a torment, because as I sat there in that tub with Ruby standing over me making sure I didn’t slit my wrists with the razor, or try to hang myself with my own underwear, I was forced to see the scars. The burns _they_ inflicted.

 

In my pre-life, I had been covered in tattoos. Big, beautiful canvases that I had spent thousands of dollars on and countless hours in the chair. Your body is a temple, I would always think, as I watched my tattoo artist paint the latest showpiece on my body. So why don’t you decorate it?

 

All my tattoos told a story – a chapter in my life that had been closed upon the completion of the ink.

 

Except for one. A thin, delicate black band around my wrist with Charlie’s name on it. That chapter hadn’t been closed. That chapter was just beginning to be written.

 

I lifted my wrist from the water, staring off into space in thought, as I absentmindedly encircled the burn ring with my thumb and pointer finger. It was a chapter They destroyed.

 

They look – _looked_ \-- at tattoos as an abomination. As a marring of the skin that was supposed to remain as clear and whole as God made it. Most women with tattoos were sent off to the Colonies, but I was different. I could have children.

 

My eyes closed, and my fingers tightened around my wrist as I remembered the pain – the agonizing, skin-ripping pain They had visited upon me. I had read a medical study one day, pre-life, where doctors reported that death by fire was the most excruciating death a human being could die. I remember laughing and going: “Well, no shit, Sherlock!”. Little did I know at the time, that I would come dangerously close to proving them right.

 

I could bare children. I had viable ovaries. I had a working womb. So, I didn’t get sent to the Colonies. But neither could I become a Handmaiden with those _abominations_ covering my flesh. Something had to be done. And They did.

 

They burned them off.

 

“How much did it hurt?”

 

Ruby’s question broke through my memories, and I glanced at her before glancing down at the burn scars that covered my arms, legs, my ribcage . . . not my face, though. Thank heavens I never tattooed my face or neck.

 

Leaning forward, I rose to get out of the tub, and Ruby stepped forward with a towel. I didn’t answer her. That kind of stupid question did not dignify an answer.

 

II

“What was your name, before?”

 

I didn’t answer her at first, not really knowing _how_ to answer her for a moment. Zipporah waited patiently and after a moment, I bowed my head. “Sydney.”

 

“And . . . and His name?”

 

I risked a glance at her. “Why do you want to know?”

 

“Curiosity, I suppose. Ruby says she’s heard you sometimes at night, when you sleep. You call out for someone, but she never hears the name clearly. And sometimes, you stare off into space, and I see Him in your eyes. What was his name?”

 

I swallow hard, both to get past the lump that had been building there, and to keep the tears at bay. As much as I liked Zipporah, I still refused to cry in front of her. It wasn’t her, it was me. I thought none of them deserved my tears.

 

“His . . . his name was Matt.”

 

“Were you married?”

 

Slowly, haltingly, I shook my head. “No. We wanted to be, but . . . never got around to it, I suppose.”

 

“But you had a son?”

 

The tone of her voice when she asked the question, made me want to smile and laugh. Zipporah was young – the daughter of a Handmaiden and another Commander. She was born, not knowing any different than Gilead. The thought that a woman could bear a child to a man without being married, it was . . . _alien._

 

“Yes. We had a child without being married. That’s what done us in, in the end.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

There came the heavy thump of the Commander’s cane on the wood flooring of the hall, and we were silenced. Our conversation ended there.

 

III

He had been a bartender. Worked in a sleazy little dive down in Kentucky. I knew _of_ him before we formally met, but my brother was friends with him. For years, he tried to hook us up, but I was broken at the time. Mentally, just destroyed. So, I ignored him, focused on me. Matt finished sowing his wild oats. And about three years later, we did what we should have done all those years ago:

 

We met.

 

It was instant chemistry – the kind that made conversations effortless and the sex seem transcendent. The kind of instant bond that seemed to transcend time itself. We would joke around after our lovemaking and say our love was reincarnated. That we were Leonidas and Gorgo, Dante and Beatrice, Johnny Cash and June Carter. We grew to love each other more than we had ever loved someone before then. After two years, we found ourselves pregnant with Charlie. He was named after my grandfather. We planned more – planned marriage, a home.

 

And then that all went to shit.

 

IV

“So, these are it. Each binder holds someone we know to be dead. Unfortunately, they aren’t in any kind of order. Sorry about that.”

 

He nodded as he followed the man wearing the green cable knit sweater, deeper into the office conference room. Across from him stood five black file cabinets. Between them, a heavy wooden table, it’s face so shiny, it reflected the light from the lamps hanging above them. The man with the green cable knit sweater shot him an apologetic look.

 

“It’s on our list. Organizing them.”

 

His hands were shoved deep into the front pockets of his jeans. His legs and feet seemed to be frozen from the harsh cold of the Canadian winter currently raging outside. His upper body, though, clad in the heavy leather of a Harley Davidson motorcycle jacket, was toasty warm, as was his head clad in a thick black woolen beanie. Ice crystals clung to the individual strands of his red beard.

 

He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got all day. Don’t gotta pick up my son until three.”

 

Green Cable Knit nodded. “Take all the time you need, then.”

 

“What if she’s not in any of these?” He asked, fighting hard to get past the lump that seemed to constantly form in his throat – especially whenever he thought of Her -- and Green Cable Knit smiled.

 

“Then there’s still hope, my man. Then there’s still hope.”

 

V

He didn’t know whether to be scared, or relieved, when, after two straight weeks of looking, he didn’t find Her in any of the binders. Didn’t find her in any of the splayed bodies, in any of the vacant, dead eyes. He remembered lifting every page with the breath frozen in his lungs, terrified that the next he would see Her. Lifeless, gone from the world . . . never to return to him and their son. When the next page was flipped, showing somebody, he had never seen before in his life, that breath would be released from his lungs, and he would relax. Until he would go to flip the next page.

 

He didn’t know whether to be scared or relieved, that she was in none of the binders. Scared, that She was still alive somewhere out in the torn ravages of Gilead. Or relieved that She wasn’t dead, and that there was still hope, that, despite whatever heinous and cruel things were going on in there, she would eventually be back in his arms.

 

Call him whatever you wanted: meathead, hot-headed biker, asshole – Matt wasn’t stupid. She was one of the few left who could still bare children. Charlie was a living, breathing testament to that. In Gilead, that had been what they were after in the end: women who could breed. If She was alive – something the binders told him was true – then she was in Hell. And there wasn’t a Goddamn thing he could about it.

 

He didn’t know whether to be scared . . . or relieved.

          

VI

He used to drink a lot. Before the world went to shit. He was a bartender and bartenders tended to drink a lot. You get done with your shift, count down your drawer and tips, clock out, then settle down at the bar with the regulars and have a beer. One beer eventually turned into a tumbler of Knob’s Creek, which almost inevitably turned into two or three Kentucky Bombs, and voila. You’re drunker than a fucking skunk.

 

It was something that had been the source of never-ending problems between them, his drinking. She had grown up loose, with looser friends. By the time she was twenty-one, she had done everything in the book, and then some. By the time they hooked up when she was twenty-three, him, twenty-seven, she had quit her partying ways and was looking to settle down. At first, his drinking hadn’t bothered her. In the beginning, they’d get drunk together and have fun, until, eventually, his alcoholism made her despise alcohol all-together. Until she wouldn’t touch a drop that wasn’t in beer.

 

When she got pregnant with Charlie, she served him up an ultimatum: He had nine months to get sober. After those nine months, if he came home drunk once without her permission, she would leave him, and take Charlie with her. Her reasoning? She flat out _refused_ to be the mom who would have to explain to their children why daddy was coming home in the state he was. She flat out _refused_ to have her children grow up knowing their daddy was a drunk.

 

So, he quit. Spent the first three months of her pregnancy drunker than he had ever been in his entire life. After that third month, when they went to the doctor and learned the baby was a boy . . . that was when he quit for good. And he didn’t touch another drop ever again. Figured he finally knew what was more important to him.

 

It was times like these, though, that he wanted a drink like it was damn near a _need_. That if he didn’t have one _right that minute_ , he would go fucking batshit! But he knew She wouldn’t want him to start again – not when she could be back in his arms tomorrow if luck held out. So, he didn’t. He just went home, tucked their son into bed, went out on the balcony, and light up his bong. It was the alcohol she had always had a problem with. Pot was different.

 

His best memories were of them blazing up. Rolling a joint, hitting the bong, taking a couple dab hits. The sex, which had always been great, was always straight up phenomenal when they were high.

 

It was the only way he could cope, knowing she was going through Hell instead of being right there with him, safe and loved in his arms.

 

There was a downside to the pot, though. After he would take his hit, hold it in for a moment and then release before coughing his way to his high, he would remember Her. He would remember her grin, the sparkle in her eyes when they would tease each other. He remembered the feel of her skin, the taste of her. He would remember what her hair -- long, thick, and ebony – would feel like in his hands and spread across his body. And just like that, his love for her would come stampeding back into him with the force of a freight train, and he’d be sitting out on the balcony, his bong resting in-between his feet, as he sobbed fruitlessly into his hands.  


	3. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, hope ya'll noticed that I did change the total chapters from "3" to "4". There are reasons for this, namely, i didn't want monster chapters on my hands. That's not fair for you guys' attention spans. It's not fair to mine. It might change once I get to writing the next chapter, but I am 85% certain that next chapter will be the end. Maybe. Possibly.
> 
> Anyway! Hope you guys enjoy, and reviews are always welcome! You guys have been awesome so far!

* * *

 

I

When Ruby left the kitchen that afternoon to fetch something from the pantry, Zipporah grabbed my hand and pulled me into her sitting room. There was a glint to her eyes that I couldn’t rightly place for a moment, before I eventually recognized it as joy. As hope.

           

Jesus Christ, I haven’t seen hope in so long, that I had forgotten what it looked like. Or even that it existed.

           

“What is it?”

           

Our voices were whispers as we spoke. And something told me that we did _not_ want this conversation being discovered.

           

“I’ve found someone!”

           

“Found someone?”

           

“Yes! Someone to take us over the border into Canada!”

           

I stood there, across from her in her sitting room, completely dumbfounded for a moment. Found someone? To take us across the border into Canada? What was she talking about – was she talking about _escape_? But that was impossible – something the Handmaids only whispered about! And furthermore, how could be sure that this person could be trusted? With the rumors of an Eye in the household, how did she not know --?

         

“You said Matt was in Canada, right?” She asked, excitedly, her voice interrupting my thoughts, and vaguely, I felt myself nod. I had mentioned to her once that there was the _possibility_ that Matt and Charlie were in Canada. If they weren’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere.

           

“I told you there was a _possibility_ he was there. That _both_ of them are there.” I spoke, and she gave another excited nod.

           

“This guy, he says that if I don’t trust him at first, that’s it fine. We can send letters over the border first – to people we know are there. That way, when we get them back, we know he’s for real. That the line is for real.”

           

I gave a bewildered shake of my head. “Where did you . . . where did you _find_ this guy?”

           

“Verona’s Handmaid,” Another Wife that Zipporah was somewhat friends with. “A friend of hers, another Handmaid, ran away not too long ago. And, supposedly, she had gotten word that she had escaped over the border. That she was safe!”

           

I shook my hand again, my hands clenched into fists at my side until the sharp edges of my nails dug into the tender skin of my palms. This couldn’t be true. Seemed a prime example of a trap. But then again, if it was true . . . _if it was true . . ._!

           

_We had watched the fireworks from a hill on Murray State University’s campus, a cooler of beers sitting on the lawn beside us, a blanket underneath us. I remembered the way his hand felt wrapped around mine -- the warmth of his smile whenever he gazed at me as we were bathed in the multi-colored blooms of light that exploded overhead._

_"I love you,” He had told me, then, and I smiled and turned my eyes onto him._

_“I love you, too.”_

But if it was true . . . I could see him again. See _them_ , again.

           

I held my breath for a moment before nodding. “Okay. Okay, let’s . . . let’s do it. He can find Matt if we send a letter?”

           

She nodded. “Yes. Supposedly, there are people in the Canadian government who handle such things.”

           

I nodded again, firmer, this time. “Okay. What else do we have to lose?”

 

 

II

 “I swear to God, Charlie, I’m not kidding!”

           

From over at his spot on the couch, his son turned his head to gaze at him over the back. On the TV across from him, old reruns of Tom & Jerry played. He was lightly chewing on his bottom lip, his eyes were wide, his black framed glasses slightly askew, and his ebony hair was ruffled. He also looked quite comfy in his green and white dinosaur pajamas.

           

Matt, who had been standing in the kitchen watching him from his spot beside the dishwasher, had to freeze in the loading of it when he caught sight of his son’s pajamas from where he sat on the couch. Little things like these caught him with more frequency, lately. Things that reminded him of Her, of their past. Things that he couldn’t run from, no matter how hard he tried.

           

 _She had loved dinosaurs_ , He thought, almost feeling helpless at the amount of love flowing through his system. _She used to joke around at how short her arms were. At her “T-Rex arms” . . ._

He wanted to cry then. Wanted to break down and sob. But he refused to do it. Not in front of Charlie.

           

“But dad, the episode’s almost over!” Charlie spoke, and Matt shook his head. Closing the dishwasher and starting it, he pushed Her from his mind.

           

“Sorry, short man, but you know the rules! It’s already thirty minutes past your bedtime!” He spoke as he began making his way from the kitchen into the living room. Leaning down on his elbows on the back of the couch, Charlie glared up at him and squinched his nose up defiantly. It was a look they both shared, and for a moment, Matt wanted to laugh at it. If he laughed, though, then Charlie would have won, and he couldn’t have that thirty minutes past a bedtime.

           

“Charlie --!”

           

“Dad --!”

           

They were both interrupted by the sudden sound of the doorbell. Brow furrowing, Matt looked over his shoulder at the door before the bell was rung again.

           

Three times.

           

In _very_ quick succession.

           

Turning back to his son, he rolled his eyes and Charlie grinned and laughed as Matt stood and approached the front door. Undoing the chain and the deadbolt, he opened the door, only to find his best friend standing on his welcome mat. Row had been the guy who, in the end, had been the one to get him and Charlie across the border into Toronto. He owed him not only his life, but his son’s as well. But Rowe was a good guy, he had known him for years before Gilead came to power. Rowe was just lucky enough to have the connections and money needed to accomplish such a thing at the last minute.

 

Rowe was grinning like a Goddamn loon or a kid who’s just woken up on Christmas Day and saw all the presents for them under the tree. “Hey buddy, what’s up?” Matt asked, and Rowe shook his head and released a breathless laugh as he held up a letter. “Matt, buddy . . . you might wanna sit down. You have no idea who this is from!”

 

 

III

 

 “Why do you want to leave?”

           

I ask this of her in complete confidence. Our friendship had grown in secret over the months I have been in her household. In secret over our shared traumas, our shared rapes. She looked up to me as an older sister – with the same awe and respect that the young ones have for those who are old enough to remember the world before the war. Before the devastation. When I talk of my past: of my tattoos, of Matt, of Charlie, she listens with a raptness that, quite frankly, is a little unsettling. So, I ask this in curiosity. Why would someone who was born after the war, want to leave everything she has ever known, for a gigantic _unknown_?

           

She gives me a look that screams “Are-You-Serious?”

           

“Why _wouldn’t_ I want to leave?” She asked, her glass of water slowly twirling in her fingers. “Look at who I’m married to. Look where I live? Why would I want to stay when . . .” She paused here and swallowed heavily. “When there’s the chance of freedom?”

           

A silence falls between us then as my eyes fall down on the envelope sitting between us with the air of a bomb. On the front, in handwriting that makes tears want to come to my eyes, is my name.

           

My name is written in his hand.

           

In Matt’s hand.

           

He’s _alive_!

           

 

IV

He had read it about a dozen times. The first time Rowe stepped inside his apartment and told him in one long, continuous breath what the letter was and who had written it before handing it to him, Matt had thought it was a cruel joke. But that was before he remembered that it was Rowe, and Rowe would _never_ play that kind of a joke on him. So, he ended up taking the letter from him and while Matt took a seat beside Charlie on the couch, Rowe took the nearby easy chair. His energy gone, Rowe covered his mouth with his hand and watched anxiously as Matt tore open the letter and quickly read what was written. Charlie, ever the sweet kid, mute Tom & Jerry before pinning an expectant look on his father.

           

When he was done, he read it again.

           

Then again.

           

Once more . . .

           

Jesus Christ . . . then he read it again, and again, and again until it seemed like it had turned into a compulsion. This was Her handwriting, the things She wrote about – how She put them, how-how She . . . sweet tapdancing Christ – _this was HER_! She was –

           

“She’s alive . . .” Matt breathed out, eyes wide, as he turned his gaze onto Rowe. His friend broke out into another, equally as relieved grin, as he nodded. Matt was clutching at the paper so tight, the tips of his fingers were turning white.

           

“She is, buddy. Thank God in heaven, she is!”

           

Returning his gaze to the letter, he shook his head. “She, uh . . . she says she’s fine, all things considered. If you consider being a Handmaid, “fine”. She says . . .” He paused here, and his eyes grew wide again. He glanced at Rowe before returning his gaze onto the paper. “She says you know someone who can get her out?”

           

Rowe nodded, but he had turned solemn again. “I do. He’s good. Part of the underground railroad. No one in his network has ever been caught. _He’s_ never been caught. But he’s very selective of who he brings over. And he’s _very_ expensive. That’s how he’s gone so long without being caught.”

           

Matt stared hard at the letter held in his hands for a moment until the words started swimming from the thin sheen of tears that had suddenly filmed his eyes. Blinking them back, he pinned Rowe with a ferocious gaze. His hands were shaking. When he spoke, his baritone voice had deepened into a threatening growl.

           

“You tell him I’ll pay whatever fee he wants me to pay – you know money isn’t an issue for me, Rowe. Fifty up front, the rest when she’s safe in my arms. You tell him that, Rowe.”

           

Rowe nodded. “Of course, buddy. I’ll personally be the one to meet her across the border, too.”

           

Matt nodded, firmly, as he swallowed hard and gently set the paper down on the coffeetable. “Good. Make sure she gets home safe, Rowe. Make sure she comes _home_!”

           

“Daddy?” Charlie eventually asked, his voice quiet and uncertain as he gazed up at his father, his eyes seeming suddenly much bigger than they were through the lenses of his glasses. Turning his gaze onto his son, Matt saw fear and uncertainty shining in his son’s eyes as he sat there beside him, knees hugged to his dinosaur pajama'ed chest, and fresh tears appeared in his eyes.

           

“Yeah, short man?” He asked as he took his son into his arms, and Charlie swallowed.

           

“Is it mommy? Is she going to come home to us?”

           

Matt nodded, his eyes closing as he held his son close. He was unable to answer his son in fear that he would break out into joyful sobs. It was Rowe who leaned forward and placed a comforting hand on Charlie’s knee.

           

“Your bet your glasses I’m gonna bring her home, Charlie!” He promised him. “We’ve found her and we’re going to bring her. I promise you I will!”

 

V

I didn’t tell Zipporah this, but the only reason I trusted this guy, was because he knew Rowe.

           

I trusted him, because Rowe trusted him.

           

Rowe was the first of Matt’s friends to meet me. He was the first to add me on Facebook – the first to make me truly feel welcome in Matt’s circle. He was the first to gently tease me by introducing me as Matt’s “Wife”. He was one of the first who met Charlie. He was one of the few who I knew, with one hundred percent certainty, was there for _Matt_. Not his money, not because of his good heart, but because of _him_.

           

So, when we finally met the guy and he looked at me and said Rowe was the one meeting us at the border, I knew I could trust him. Rowe would only have trusted the best to get me across to safety and back to Matt and Charlie.

           

That day – Day One of our Freedom -- Zipporah and I left with the excuse of going to visit with her friend whose Handmaid had recently given birth. Our driver, who had been waiting conveniently around the corner for Ruby to place the call (and who had somehow acquired quite the nice vantage point to see through the kitchen picture window at the house’s telephone), was one of our Guide’s contacts. At first, we balked, seeing him drive up in a shining black car. How powerful was this guy, for his contacts to drive around in the same cars as the Commanders and their Wives?

           

But we could only balk for a moment. Any hesitation – any at _all_ – could have tipped some prying person off. So, with our hearts pounding in our throats, but our movements fluid – like all we were really doing was going to visit with friends -- we stepped into the car. We watched as he walked calmly around the back to take his place behind the wheel, adjusting his tie as he did so. Smartly snapping his seatbelt into place and taking the time to adjust his rearview mirror, we did the same before he put on his turn signal and carefully drove out onto the street from where he had been parked in front of the house’s curb.

           

His calm. His serenity. It was grating. He was committing the highest form of treason right now -- _how could he be so calm_?

           

After we had drove for a while, his eyes caught ours in the rearview mirror. “When I tell you, the both of you need to hide under the blanket there in the floor. Get as low as you can. The guards at the checkpoints should have been paid off, but you never can be too careful.”

           

We nodded, and our breaths seemed to hold while we waited for his murmured word. When it came, we darted as quickly as we could beneath the blanket, huddling together closer than we had ever been beneath the suffocating clothe. It was claustrophobic, lying there, listening to the guards’ banter with our driver before tersely asking for his papers. For his reasons for crossing that checkpoint that day. What was the name of the Commander he was picking up? Where was he? Who was he with? The driver answered calmly and with aplomb, but we both we were waiting to hear that gun cock, the “BANG” as it was fired, the dull “THUNK” as our driver’s lifeless head hit the steering wheel. It was dark, and suffocating, and claustrophobic with Zipporah under the blanket, and I had to visibly restrain myself from doing something stupid.

           

It’s funny, the stupid situations when your body wants to go into Fight or Flight mode.

           

It seemed like eons before – we could hardly believe it! – the guards’ thanked our driver, bid him a nice day, and we drove off from the checkpoint. We waited until he spoke again, telling us that we were almost at our destination, and that we needed to stay under the blanket at all costs until we reached it. The place we were going was a safehouse. We would stay there until our driver received word from his contact that Rowe and his men were ready and stationed at the border to receive us. Once he had received that word, then the next leg of our journey would begin.

           

“You know . . . I’ve been thinking . . .” Zipporah murmured from beneath the blanket, and I swallowed hard, trying to squash down any remnant feelings of claustrophobia before replying with:

           

“About what?”

           

“What name I’m going to pick when I cross the border.”

           

I gazed at her through the darkness – or where I _thought_ she would be in the darkness. “Your name? Why would you want to change your name?”

           

I felt her shrug. “I don’t, it just . . . it _feels_ right. To change it, I mean. Once we cross the border, we’ll be _free_! Zipporah . . . Zipporah was my _Wife_ name. I want a new name. A Freedom name.”

           

“Okay,” I spoke, not unable to keep the small smile from appearing on my face. “What name have you decided to pick, then?”

           

There was a pause for a moment. “Faith. I like the name Faith.”


End file.
